Kenneth Woods has been appointed Artistic Director of the Colorado MahlerFest. He is only the second Artistic Director in the festival’s 28-year history and succeeds Founding Artistic Director Robert Olson.

every line comes through with exceptional clarity. This gives the piece a new profile, with the complex but now clear counterpoint driving the music and leading the ear through the harmonic web. There is atmosphere here too, and much warmth in the ensemble’s sound, but that is never at the expense of the individual lines...

Not one but two Schumann Spring Symphonies hove into earshot. Kenneth Woods and the Orchestra of the Swan versus Yannick Nezet-Seguin and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Woods wins it. One needs express no surprise when the committed outfit with its own conductor beats the prestige youngsters under the rising star jet-setter.

Schoenberg and Brahms on Somm

Auricolae- Music and Storytelling on Avie

“The music is incidental, illustrative, with lots of opportunities for dissonant, clashing sounds, all intended for performance in schools with no previous exposure to classical music. It’s a matter of appealing narratives, cleverly wrapped in contemporary sounds. Or should that be the other way around?” The Irish Times

Philip Sawyers- Cello Concerto, Symphony no. 2 and Concertante

A 2014 MusicWeb International Record of the Year

"Sawyers is a composer of real quality which is so pleasing when there is so much mediocrity around. His music is always fascinating in its breadth of ideas as well as its execution as this disc so amply demonstrates. "

If you want to learn more about Mahler, why not start with Ken’s recording of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. [“This is a most important issue, and all Mahlerians should make its acquisition an urgent necessity.”–International Record Review] Find out more about this disc here, or listen to extracts, here.